Isabel Hardman is assistant editor of The Spectator and author of Why We Get the Wrong Politicians. She also presents Radio 4’s Week in Westminster.
Jeremy Corbyn may have a Shadow Cabinet and a full frontbench team, but the Labour leader doesn’t have many genuine outriders even amongst those he has given jobs to. Most frontbenchers seem rather refreshed by how happy he is for them to have open discussions at meetings: yesterday’s Shadow Cabinet meeting, for instance, was quite discursive and friendly,
Shortly after MPs return from the conference recess, they will debate a petition that orders the government to ‘close all borders and prevent more immigrants from entering Britain’ because ‘foreign citizens are taking all our benefits’ and ‘many of them are trying to change UK into a Muslim country’. It then adds that ‘there is
John Bercow has long made clear that he would like MPs to behave a little better at Prime Minister’s Questions, which he believes is so rowdy that it upsets voters. Well, he seems to have got what he wants, or at least for the first week of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour party. Last
The Conservative Party board has agreed that CCHQ will remain strictly neutral throughout the EU referendum campaign, Coffee House understands. Sources report that this afternoon’s meeting concluded that it was in the best interests of the party that its campaign machine be inaccessible to either side in the campaign. MPs had warned of a split if
Jeremy Corbyn’s first policy pronouncement as Labour leader hasn’t been all that surprising: he wants a ‘People’s Railway’ that will bring the railways back into public ownership line by line. He will have noticed the excited noises that party members made at hustings whenever he mentioned rail renationalisation – and the impatient sighs from the
David Cameron will today support calls from his MPs to keep the Conservative party neutral during the EU referendum campaign, Coffee House understands. The Times reports this morning that the Conservative party board will meet to discuss whether or not the party machine should remain strictly neutral. This would mean the campaign to stay in
Appointing John McDonnell as his Shadow Chancellor made Jeremy Corbyn’s first few days as Labour leader much harder than they needed to be. This was mainly because the Hayes and Harlington MP made some deeply distasteful comments about the ‘bravery’ of the IRA. In 2003, McDonnell told a gathering to commemorate IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands: ‘It’s
How does Labour solve the greatest crisis in its history? In this week’s Spectator, I interview party thinker and former Miliband policy chief Jon Cruddas about where his party goes next. Cruddas doesn’t think Jeremy Corbyn is Labour’s problem: he’s just the symptom of an identity crisis that the party would have suffered from whoever got
Not even Jeremy Corbyn can distract ministers from the fact that in the next few months, they’ll be announcing huge cuts to their departmental spending. They submitted their proposals for cuts for the spending review to the Treasury earlier this month. Most ministers described the process as ‘bruising’, but they didn’t seem quite as agitated
Jeremy Corbyn surfaced last night to do his first round of broadcast interviews since becoming Labour leader. The two key lines were on Europe and Trident, and though the interviewers were interested in these issues, Corbyn also had an interest in being as clear as he possibly could be on them as they play a
Shortly before the last election a group of Labour MPs approached Ed Miliband to ask him what he would do if he lost. They suggested he could provide stability by staying on as leader for a while, as Michael Howard had done, and that his last duty should be to oversee an inquiry into what
Even though the Tories got their way on yesterday’s vote on tax credits, in which they managed to get a laws-of-physics-defying majority of 35, they cannot regard this matter as settled. Indeed, there is still a serious threat of a revolt on this matter. George Osborne held individual meetings with each of the handful of
PMQs today was interesting for all sorts of reasons. But one answer to a question which may have a longer-lasting impact than all the new politics stuff (which though quite welcome did feel a bit like someone making a show of going to the gym in January) may have completely escaped most people’s attention. It
Jeremy Corbyn wants to forge a new kind of politics, answering public discontent with the way things are done in Westminster. One of the things that voters often say they don’t like about politicians is the way they appear to abandon their principles in exchange for power. The idea that power acts as a sort
The government has a working majority of 16. But today it managed to win a tricky vote in the House of Commons that its own MPs were threatening to rebel on, and that the DUP had said it wouldn’t help the government on. The measure was on tax credits, and the government got a majority of
Labour has issued a line on why the party’s leader didn’t sing the National Anthem at today’s Battle of Britain memorial service: ‘Jeremy attended today’s event to show respect for those who fought in conflicts for Britain. ‘As he said in the words issued this morning, the heroism of the Royal Air Force in the Battle
If you’d missed Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour leader, and pitched up to business questions in the Commons today, you might not have noticed that much had changed, initially. Labour had a good frontbench team scrutinising the government, with Angela Eagle leading in her customary dry manner. She asked questions about the skills gap, while
Was the drone strike that killed Reyaad Khan authorised because he posed a threat to Britain, or because he posed a threat to Iraq? Last week, David Cameron told the House of Commons that the strike took place because ‘there was a terrorist directing murder on our streets and no other means to stop him’.
After being criticised for not involving enough women in his shadow cabinet, Jeremy Corbyn has brought more women in by creating cabinet roles. He has promoted ‘young people and voter registration’ to a Cabinet role and given the job to Gloria de Piero, who will be terrific at it given her interest in non-voters and
Funnily enough, the DUP aren’t particularly happy that Labour’s new Shadow Chancellor praised the ‘bravery’ of the IRA. They were already – as reported on Coffee House – nervous about Jeremy Corbyn becoming Labour leader. But a party source says: ‘Corbyn was a punch to roll with. He was elected after all. And ultimately he’s